Gov. Haley dismisses Stephen Colbert Senate interest

Gov. Haley dismisses Stephen Colbert Senate interest

By Kevin Liptak, CNN

(CNN) — The swell of online support for Republican South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley to appoint comedy show host Stephen Colbert to her state’s open U.S. Senate seat hasn’t gone unnoticed by the Palmetto State Republican, who pointed out one hangup on her Facebook Friday.

“Stephen, thank you for your interest in South Carolina’s U.S. Senate seat and for the thousands of tweets you and your fans sent me,” Haley wrote, before delivering one piece of archive material that could sink Colbert’s chances.

“You forget one thing, my friend. You didn’t know our state drink. Big, big mistake,” she said, pointing back to a “Colbert Report” interview in April when she asked the host – who grew up in Charleston – to name the official South Carolina beverage.

“There’s a state drink?” he asked, befuddled, before she told him it was milk.

On Thursday, Colbert ticked off the traits he thought South Carolina’s new senator should possess: “Somebody conservative, somebody from South Carolina. Maybe somebody who had a super PAC.”

Colbert, who mockingly started a super PAC in the summer of 2011 that raked in more than $1.2 million, came to the conclusion he’d be an ideal replacement for Sen. Jim DeMint. DeMint announced Thursday he was leaving the Senate to become president of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.

By the time Colbert’s show came on the air Thursday, the online swell of support (however joking) had begun, including a website that specifies it’s “in no way affiliated with Stephen Colbert or The Colbert Report.”

“Folks, I’m not going to sit here and say I should be South Carolina’s next senator. Not when so many other people are saying it for me,” Colbert said on his show – adding he had thought to himself, “You know what they could use? Another white guy.”